In the months following my PhD viva, I struggled to decide what direction my research should take. Given the transhistorical and thematic nature of my thesis, a monograph seemed the wrong approach, so I set about the task of publishing it as a series of articles and book chapters. I learned that the Alhambra, an Islamic fortress-palace turned Castilian residence, turned global tourist destination in Spain, is an historical object far too big for a single study, encompassing multiple material and immaterial histories. The very thing that had attracted me to the monument – its potential for blowing apart historical and disciplinary categories – is also what made it so difficult to contain in a single publication. My central assertion, that the Alhambra cannot be fully understood through a singular synchronic lens but must be viewed across and between its periods of transformation, led me to conclude that through its constant appropriation and reimagining it remained permanently displaced. Throughout my time studying this slippery and illusive subject, I dabbled in being a Medievalist, an Islamicist, a Mediterraneanist, a Renaissance/Early Modern scholar, a Victorianist and even a ‘Medievalismist’. Having taken up the problem of ornament and decoration as intermediary categories elided by the Western canon, I also found myself at odds with my own field. ‘Non-Western’ art historians have made significant headway challenging the discipline's Eurocentrism in recent years, but progress is slow and methodological tools thin on the ground. My peripatetic and at times combative scholarly journey has resulted in a pluralistic and fragmented research profile, causing no small amount of anxiety about how to define my specialism and my work, often against the grain of job specifications and funding remits.

The benefit of this halting approach is that I have learned to see the value in slowing down, in pausing to consider the strengths and versatility of my research, in recalling the joy of writing, researching and teaching. I've become more discerning when using the term ‘interdisciplinary’ and developed a more carefully considered rationale for entering into particular collaborations. Rather than grabbing my nearest colleague and leaping through funding hoops, I've identified mutually productive links both in and outside academia.